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Donna Trenton (Dee Wallace) is an unhappily-married wife of an advertising bigshot named Vic (Daniel Hugh Kelly). They live a moderately-prosperous life in a New England town with an adorable tot named Tad (Danny Pintauro), but something's not right. It's something that, in her mind, might be corrected via an extra-marital affair.
Except that it's not. Don't we all know that adultery--especially in horror movies--only make things worse? Donna's affair with a local handiman named Steve Kemp (Christopher Stone, who is Wallace's husband in real-life) is only a cry for help, and it will only be assuaged when the surrogate villain is revealed in this film version of Stephen King's Cujo.
Joe Camber (Ed Lauter) is a typical New England hick who runs an auto-repair service in his home garage. His wife Chastity (Kaiulani Lee) and son Brett (Billy Jacoby) live . And the family has a faithful St. Bernard doggie named--you guessed it--Cujo. The name means "unstoppable force" or something similar in a language which presently escapes this reviewer. And to top off the whole scenario, Cujo has just contracted rabies, a disorder which basically transforms housepets into raving, snarling menaces who will eventually die from it, but can also infect other animals or humans with the disease.
Meanwhile, Donna's attempt to break off the affair with her adulterous lover only incites rage in him. And before she has much of a chance to set things right with Vic, she brings her car to the Camber garage for servicing. No one seems to be home (that's because Chastity and Brett out of town by now, and the rabid Cujo has fatally mauled Joe and one of his pals), so she attempts to leave. Problem is, the car--a Ford Pinto....go figure!--will not start back up. Even worse, the lurking Cujo pounces upon the stalled vehicle, terrorizing Donna as well as Tad in the passenger seat.
Trapped in the Pinto, Donna and Tad bide their time in this claustrophobic environment at this deserted death house on the outskirts of town, while the unaware Vic enlists authorities to investigate Kemp's recent vandalization of his house. It's a case of bad timing, to be sure.
Director Lewis Teague, who would go on to direct the King-inspired Cat's Eye not long after, has a deft sense of portraying a trapped environment without cramping the viewer. As prolonged as Donna and Tad's ordeal is, it is also competently telegraphed. And afficionados of Stephen King will appreciate the inclusion of the Sheriff George Bannerman character here; we had previously met him in The Dead Zone (played by Tom Skerritt in the film version of that one). Played by Sandy Ward here, he meets his ultimate destiny at Cujo's jaws, and the successor to his job in future King novels (and played by various actors in the ensuing movies) would be one Alan Pangborn.
The script by Don Carlos Dunaway and Lauren Currier takes one specific liberty with the source material which alters the conclusion, and it revolves around the "live-or-die" fate of one character. In a 1984 Fangoria interview, King categorically stated, "People who've seen the movie and also read the book know, (the character) really died." You can't argue with the master. And if it's a book-to-movie transition, the book is always canon, anyway.
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